The Tale of the Gazprom Tower

This is the fairy tale about the Gazprom Tower in beautiful St. Petersburg/Russia. About the kings and queens creating it, about their dreams and wishes, about the wonderful buildings preceding it and the kings and queens who built them. It’s about voices behind the curtain and subjects, who don’t obey.
It’s a long story cut short, but without an end. Because once you release the spirits you won’t get rid of them, or as Faust said: Spirits that I’ve cited, my commands ignore.

The Tower: A Songspiel

This film is based on an analysis of the conflict that has developed
 around the planned Okhta Center with a Gazprom skyscraper in Petersburg and on real
 documents from Russian social and political life.
 April 2010

Both of these films are darkly comic and visually engaging with deep and rich historical and geographical context. Enjoy and experience them.

New Delhi is to play host to the first ever Commonwealth Games held in Asia this coming October and, as with the London Olympics in 2012, opinion is divided. There is a powerful PR machine here feeding out reminders all over the city in the run up to the Games, with slogans such as ‘Green Delhi Clean Delhi’, in the hopes of cleaning up the rather extensive levels of pollution. New Delhi’s chattering classes, however, seem bemused at high foreign expectations.

“You do know there will be no Games?” a well-respected lawyer has exclaimed. Less pessimistic, but equally reserved architects involved in the construction of the highly controversial Commonwealth Games headquarters more humorously claimed the public and wider international community would certainly not receive the Games ‘described on the tin’, but that the government would unquestionably know what to show. And more importantly, what to conceal.

The spirit of jugad is a common concept in New Delhi, which roughly translates at best as ‘God willing’, and at worst as ‘by hook or by crook’. Many have invoked the term in relation to the Games, which are taking far longer and becoming much costlier than anticipated, as with the 2012 Olympics. The Games will be completed jugad, but it’s clear from walking the streets and talking to people that while it remains a subject of interesting debate for the Money Men, it is a worrying and at times livelihood-threatening prospect for the many million wallahs or ’street sellers’ as harsher security restrictions are brought into place. Many are doubtful that the measures will end when the Games do.

There are those of course who proclaim that the Games connote excitement and invigoration, that they will bring life to the city. And in several respects this is true. It must be noted, however, that after each Asia Games in the 70s and 80s, there was deep civil unrest, which may or may not have been related to the Asia Games themselves. But taking into account the suspension of civil rights after the first Asia Games due to an internal ’state of emergency’; and the holding of the second Asia Games in order to clean up the image of the regime – whispers of papering over social cracks, and governmental tin ears cannot be avoided.

As to the aftermath of this autumn’s Commonwealth Games, New Delhi dwellers must watch and wait.

Read the latest planA posts here.

Also see related blogs:

Battersea Power Station

London Olympics

Silwood Video Group

Eco Towns and Villages

Or visit:

Spectacle  homepage
Befriend Spectacle.Docs on Facebook
Follow SpectacleMedia on Twitter

Olympic Blues

BATTERSEA POWER STATION AND OLYMPICS 2012: LEGACY, LAND GRABS AND LIBERTIES

Mark Saunders talk and videos

Wednesday, 02 June 2010 17:30

Room 517 (5th floor), Bartlett School of Planning, UCL, Wates House, 22 Gordon Street, London WC1H 0QB.

Directions

More info on London Planning Seminars

For more info:
On the Olympics:
Project: http://www.spectacle.co.uk/London-Olympics-2012
Blog: http://www.spectacle.co.uk/spectacleblog/category/olympics-2012/

On Battersea Power Station:
Project: http://www.spectacle.co.uk/Battersea-Power-Station
Blog: http://www.spectacle.co.uk/spectacleblog/category/battersea-power-station/

This article from the Battersea Power Station Community Group website in 2006 demonstrates REO / Treasure Holding’s attitudes towards section 106 and community participation.

Here in the UK after a few centimeters of snow cars are skidding all over the place creating a real danger for cyclists. In other countries motorists fit winter or snow tyres to their cars in the winter months. Surely by failing to do this motorists in the UK are negligent and therefore not insured in the event of skidding on the ice and having an accident?

If a cyclist rides on the pavement they are liable to a £500.00 fine. So what’s the fine for driving a car on an icy road without snow tyres? Nothing?

There were more than 11 cyclist deaths in London in 2009. In 2005, 20 cyclists were killed and 338 injured on London’s roads. In 2006, 18 were killed and 349 injured and 2007 14 died and 253 were injured.

Si “Cool” Rhode-Khil will be writing regularly on cycling for PlanA on the Spectacle Blog.

To learn more see www.baaga.co.uk

Read what Friends of the Earth have to say at:

http://foe.co.uk/resource/briefings/ecotowns_briefing.pdf

The Local Government Association says:

“These developments could become the eco-slums of the future”

Given the abysmal history of the Power Station’s owners’ reluctance to do anything but the absolute minimum of repairs critics are doubtful they would ever replace the chimneys once demolished- leaving a featureless pile of bricks and little to protect. No doubt, like with the roof, promises will be made to replace the chimneys, but various unavoidable economic or unforeseen technical problems will be cited as external reasons not to replace them. By getting planning permission from Wandsworth Borough Council to take down the chimneys Parkview, the previous owners, greatly added to the resale value of the site when they flipped it. It is a well known property developers’ trick when faced with a listed building to destroy or degrade the key feature that makes a building worth saving e.g. the facade of the beautiful Firestone Building was bulldozed leaving nothing worth protecting.

Bulldozers outpace the Heritage bureaucrats

IN MEMORIAM THE ELEPHANT AND CASTLE DESTROYED BY PEEL HOLDINGS PLC

The “unsafe” nature of the chimneys is also used as an excuse to not open up the river front land for public use.  During the rare times the Power Station is open to the public the whole site is a hard hat area and the roofless interior space between the chimneys completely out of bounds for safety reasons. Interestingly when cash is on the table this same space can accommodate a giant marquee for public events.

Marquee in between "unsafe" chimneys.

Rob Tincknell, managing director of Treasury Holdings, expressed our concerns exactly when he told Jonathan Prynn, Consumer Business Editor for the Evening Standard  04.06.09
Unveiled: the ‘last chance’ for Battersea Power Station

[Tincknell].. hopes the chimneys, thought to have been beyond repair, may be saved. The previous plan saw them being replaced by replicas. He said: “If this scheme does not make it, there is no power station. If you look back in history there has been disaster after disaster, rubbish scheme after rubbish scheme. We have designed, consulted and are about to put in a planning application. The project is in the hands of developers who know what they are doing.”

That’s what we are worried about.

——————————————————————————————————————————

Visit Spectacle’s on-going Battersea Power Station Project

Watch a video trailer here: Battersea Power Station – The Story So Far

Subscribe to our newsletter mailing list, visit our contact page to subscribe

If you live in the neighbourhood and would like to get involved, contact us here putting Battersea Power Station in your message.

Click here to view more Battersea Power Station links

Spectacle Home Page

If you would like to object to the planning applications for Battersea Power Station you have until January 31st 2010 click here for more details.

For more information about Spectacle’s Battersea Power Station project including video interviews.

To read more blogs about Battersea Power Station

Private helicopter taking off from Battersea Power Station

So while the principle of allowing use of the site is established there is no transparent decision making process for allowing community or public use of the site – it seems to be at the whim and gift of REO’s private patronage.

There does not seem to have been any consultation on the noisy informal heliport.  It would also appear that the helicopter is flying outside the compulsory Helicopter flight route over the Thames. If it is a single engined helicopter it should only be flying over the Thames in the London Control Zone. Helicopters taking off from Battersea Power Station fly south inland flying over residential areas.

Helicopter landing at Battersea Power Station

If you are concerned about noise from helicopters you might be interested to read  In a Spin- A review of Helicopter Noise by London Assembly Environment Committee

Visit Spectacle’s on-going Battersea Power Station Project

Watch a video trailer here: Battersea Power Station – The Story So Far

Subscribe to our newsletter mailing list, visit our contact page to subscribe

If you live in the neighbourhood and would like to get involved, contact us here putting Battersea Power Station in your message.

Click here to view more Battersea Power Station links

Spectacle Home Page

If you would like to object to the planning applications for Battersea Power Station you have until January 31st 2010 click here for more details.

For more information about Spectacle’s Battersea Power Station project including video interviews.

To read more blogs about Battersea Power Station

REO, the current owners of Battersea Power Station, make vague promises about community use and access to the site but all their plans are projected way into the future. REO’s schedule is “planning” until 2012 and building only set to finish in 2020- nearly 40 years after the power station was decommissioned.

Do you have any ideas for immediate use?

How about something for the kids like a giant adventure playground?
A river bus hub for river buses that acccept oyster cards?

The building is so huge, many times the size of its little and uglier sister the Tate Modern, it can probably accommodate all your ideas.

REO insist on only considering grandiose money making schemes on the site. They clearly plan to do nothing until 2012 and then only if they get their tube extension. This “all or nothing” approach flies in the face of current economic realities and other successful models of re-using industrial buildings based on either gradual and organic development or imaginative re-use of the spaces.

Do you have any ideas for how to use such a big building?

A museum of power technology; steam, water, wind, coal?
A Museum of the Thames? It could contain many boats, it has a river front. It has a great views from the chimneys.
An extension of the Science or Natural History Museums for all their bigger exhibits?
A Museum of Flight. Battersea has connections with aviation e.g.1900s Battersea Balloon Works.

Most of REO’s plans are for building around the site.Their ideas for the power station are banal, a conference centre (yawn), hotel and shopping (novel) and, would you believe, flats. If there was ever a building inappropriate for residential use it is Battersea Power Station. Their plans necessitate vandalising the magnificent brick facades by punching through windows in order to maximise income generating floor space. Light wells would be the more appropriate, architecturally sensitive but less profitable option.

Do you have any ideas that do not mean destroying the architectural value of the building?

REO make much of the “green spaces” ( the little bits between what they plan to build around the power station) but are less keen to make clear most are private spaces. Do you have ideas for the site that do not require surrounding and obscuring the Power Station with dense ugly office buildings?

Do you have any ideas how to use the current open spaces around the power station?

Doing nothing until 2020 demonstrates a bankruptcy of ideas by REO. If REO cannot think of, or at least allow, any uses that benefit Londoners and the local community then they are unsuitable custodians of a national treasure and should hand over the site to public ownership.

Visit Spectacle’s on-going Battersea Power Station Project

Watch a video trailer here: Battersea Power Station – The Story So Far

Subscribe to our newsletter mailing list, visit our contact page to subscribe

If you live in the neighbourhood and would like to get involved, contact us here putting Battersea Power Station in your message.

Click here to view more Battersea Power Station links

Spectacle Home Page

Proposed tube extension

Sadiq Khan MP, Minister of State for Transport, confirmed that there are no plans to build the Battersea tube extension and no public money from either the Mayor or the government for such a scheme- dashing the hopes for the Battersea Power Station development.

Owners of Battersea Power Station, REO (Real Estate Opportunities), claim their plans for the Power Station, currently out for public consultation, depends on the extension of the Northern Line to a new tube station at Battersea (near to Battersea Park rail Station.)  Khan’s unequivocal statement bangs the nail in the coffin of a public funded tube extension.

Besides the recently announced £4 billion short fall in Transport for London’s budget the Battersea tube project was never likely to happen for a number of reasons.

The site is well connected by buses and only a short walk to Vauxhall and one stop by train to Victoria. Nearby Queenstown Rd Station connects in minutes to Waterloo and Clapham Junction.

While Battersea has long wanted a tube station a bizarre two stop branch from Kennington is not the answer. As a cul-de-sac it will either be a shuttle service or will have to have two platforms (or the shunting infrastructure) for tube trains to “turn around”.  What is needed is an integrated transport scheme.

For a tiny fraction of the cost extra buses or even a tram line could improve the connections between Victoria, Vauxhall and Waterloo, all more useful transport nodes  than Kennington on the already over crowded Northern Line. Overhead rail infrastructure exists but there is simply not enough rolling stock. The Victoria to London Bridge service that goes via Battersea Park Station has a useless two trains an hour. More frequent  trains could make it a very useful line. A bus linking Clapham Common tube, via Chelsea Bridge, with Victoria, Pimlico and Westminster tube stations would go a long way to integrating transport of the area.

Finally even with REO’s dense and greedy plans for developments all around the power station there will simply not be enough people in the station’s catchment area to make it viable. The proposed US Embassy would be as near to Vauxhall so why bother going all that way to Battersea tube simply to arrive at Kennington?

REO claim they are going to pay for the tube and it will not need public money but with debts of £1.6 billion REO are hardly in a position to engage in tunnelling, one of the construction industry’s most expensive activities. They do not seem to even have the money to repair broken windows in the Power Station.

The reality is that REO have made a seriously bad investment, they bought the site for £400m at the height of the property market. The previous owner had bought it for £100m only a few years earlier. The only way REO can recoup their investment is to demolish the power station. Without the power station the site is one of Europe’s biggest and most valuable inner city brown field sites. REO insist the tube line extension is key to their development but it is just a red herring that simultaneously wins support from locals keen for transport improvements and plays for time. It adds to the delaying tactic of perpetual deferment while the building is allowed to rot and fall down.

REO’s plan far from benefiting Battersea condemns the area to years more planning blight, their pie-in-the-sky transport scheme will never happen and only distracts attention from intelligent, achievable improvements.

Visit Spectacle’s on-going Battersea Power Station Project

Watch a video trailer here: Battersea Power Station – The Story So Far

Subscribe to our newsletter mailing list, visit our contact page to subscribe

If you live in the neighbourhood and would like to get involved, contact us here putting Battersea Power Station in your message.

Click here for more Battersea Power Station links

Spectacle Home Page

If you would like to object to the planning applications you have until January 31st 2010 click here for more details.

For more information about Spectacle’s Battersea Power Station project including video interviews.

To read more blogs about Battersea Power Station